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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+Blocks
+------
+
+ext4 allocates storage space in units of “blocks”. A block is a group of
+sectors between 1KiB and 64KiB, and the number of sectors must be an
+integral power of 2. Blocks are in turn grouped into larger units called
+block groups. Block size is specified at mkfs time and typically is
+4KiB. You may experience mounting problems if block size is greater than
+page size (i.e. 64KiB blocks on a i386 which only has 4KiB memory
+pages). By default a filesystem can contain 2^32 blocks; if the '64bit'
+feature is enabled, then a filesystem can have 2^64 blocks. The location
+of structures is stored in terms of the block number the structure lives
+in and not the absolute offset on disk.
+
+For 32-bit filesystems, limits are as follows:
+
+.. list-table::
+ :widths: 1 1 1 1 1
+ :header-rows: 1
+
+ * - Item
+ - 1KiB
+ - 2KiB
+ - 4KiB
+ - 64KiB
+ * - Blocks
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ * - Inodes
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ * - File System Size
+ - 4TiB
+ - 8TiB
+ - 16TiB
+ - 256PiB
+ * - Blocks Per Block Group
+ - 8,192
+ - 16,384
+ - 32,768
+ - 524,288
+ * - Inodes Per Block Group
+ - 8,192
+ - 16,384
+ - 32,768
+ - 524,288
+ * - Block Group Size
+ - 8MiB
+ - 32MiB
+ - 128MiB
+ - 32GiB
+ * - Blocks Per File, Extents
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ * - Blocks Per File, Block Maps
+ - 16,843,020
+ - 134,480,396
+ - 1,074,791,436
+ - 4,398,314,962,956 (really 2^32 due to field size limitations)
+ * - File Size, Extents
+ - 4TiB
+ - 8TiB
+ - 16TiB
+ - 256TiB
+ * - File Size, Block Maps
+ - 16GiB
+ - 256GiB
+ - 4TiB
+ - 256TiB
+
+For 64-bit filesystems, limits are as follows:
+
+.. list-table::
+ :widths: 1 1 1 1 1
+ :header-rows: 1
+
+ * - Item
+ - 1KiB
+ - 2KiB
+ - 4KiB
+ - 64KiB
+ * - Blocks
+ - 2^64
+ - 2^64
+ - 2^64
+ - 2^64
+ * - Inodes
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ * - File System Size
+ - 16ZiB
+ - 32ZiB
+ - 64ZiB
+ - 1YiB
+ * - Blocks Per Block Group
+ - 8,192
+ - 16,384
+ - 32,768
+ - 524,288
+ * - Inodes Per Block Group
+ - 8,192
+ - 16,384
+ - 32,768
+ - 524,288
+ * - Block Group Size
+ - 8MiB
+ - 32MiB
+ - 128MiB
+ - 32GiB
+ * - Blocks Per File, Extents
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ - 2^32
+ * - Blocks Per File, Block Maps
+ - 16,843,020
+ - 134,480,396
+ - 1,074,791,436
+ - 4,398,314,962,956 (really 2^32 due to field size limitations)
+ * - File Size, Extents
+ - 4TiB
+ - 8TiB
+ - 16TiB
+ - 256TiB
+ * - File Size, Block Maps
+ - 16GiB
+ - 256GiB
+ - 4TiB
+ - 256TiB
+
+Note: Files not using extents (i.e. files using block maps) must be
+placed within the first 2^32 blocks of a filesystem. Files with extents
+must be placed within the first 2^48 blocks of a filesystem. It's not
+clear what happens with larger filesystems.